First; hidden part ions can be exploited by virus writers. Second; drives fail. Third; it wastes space p, especially on AIRs where space is extremely limited.

Supposedly this gives the machine the ability to restore right over the Internet. OK; so what do you do if the partition on the drive isn't restorable? Yeah I know sometimes it is but a un repairable drive is not uncommon.

From Apples standpoint I can see some positives. For one it allows a restore even if the user doesn't have his dongle with him. Let's have a show of hands - how many know where their USB key is right now?

Apple could easily address this by simply offering a utility to build a recovery drive on a USB dongle or an SD card.

I know it's rough, but they will offer a USB OS very soon.... You won't need your key, internet connection, or anything else other than just your computer. Just plug in and get going.

I tend to agree with the former. I suppose anything on physical media is becoming irrelevant nowadays, but I would have appreciated (at least on build-to-order) an option to include it. Usually the first thing I do on a new Mac is wipe it out a couple times to test the re-install process. Since I'm purchasing Lion for my 2009 i7 iMac, I'll just make a boot disk when I download it. I'll wait and see as to how much actual space the recovery partition is. 256GB is not much in the big picture.

I just placed my order for the new i7 MBA and a couple things about the new model raises my eyebrow. The lack of physical recovery media, and the integrated graphics using a portion of the valuable 4GB system ram. I use my current 2010 MBA religiously at the office to run both OSX and Windows 7 (via VMWare) and using system ram is not cool. I'll save my judgement until I have a chance to test my current MBA alongside my new MBA with the same configuration.

So far, the reviews look great. I hope my concerns are unwarranted. It should arrive by the end of the week so hopefully, graphics reviews will be positive. I do love the NVidia performance of my current MBA and hope the new one is just as good.

You obviously don't know a whole lot about how IGPs work. They all use system RAM instead of their own. The dedicated DDR3 talked about in this article does sound misleading, but the RAM was taken from the system's pool of DDR3 with the 320m in the previous air. Same deal with the 9400m in my '08 MacBook.

EDIT: It does sound like Intel's IGP doesn't have a specific amount dedicated to it though, if I am reading it correctly.
EDIT2: Well, regardless of how I'm reading it, it seems that the amount dedicated to the HD 3k is 256MB in the $999 11-inch model and 384MB in the $1199 model and the 13''. For some reason AI doesn't seem to mention that fact.

None of the first few pages of posters at least have mentioned that if you max out the 11" to the i7 CPU and 256 GB of SSD, it's only $50 less than the top end 13"!! ($1699 vs. 1649).

For that paltry diff, I'd take the screen real estate every time unless I had a really specific reason for lugging the smaller version around instead of the the bigger.....

I bought my 13" i7 MBA just a couple days ago and awaiting its arrival. Before I bought it, I noticed the exact same thing with the $50 price difference and decided to go (back) to the 13" simply because of the extra real-estate. At $50, it was a no-brainer.

Interesting that the two prices are so close together yet not really mentioned. At that point, it really does come down to physical size and the user preferring that over anything else.

I bought my 13" i7 MBA just a couple days ago and awaiting its arrival. Before I bought it, I noticed the exact same thing with the $50 price difference and decided to go (back) to the 13" simply because of the extra real-estate. At $50, it was a no-brainer.

Interesting that the two prices are so close together yet not really mentioned. At that point, it really does come down to physical size and the user preferring that over anything else.

I have two 26 inch 1920x1280 displays with HDMI, DVI, and VGA ports. Is there a way I could connect these to a new MacBook Air? Sorry if this is a dumb question. I have never owned a Mac but am considering it.

I have two 26 inch 1920x1280 displays with HDMI, DVI, and VGA ports. Is there a way I could connect these to a new MacBook Air? Sorry if this is a dumb question. I have never owned a Mac but am considering it.

I have two 26 inch 1920x1280 displays with HDMI, DVI, and VGA ports. Is there a way I could connect these to a new MacBook Air? Sorry if this is a dumb question. I have never owned a Mac but am considering it.

Via Thunderbolt.* Sure you are smart enough to go from there.

You did, "Just bought Extreme Base Station 2 months ago." What did you hook it up to?

Recovery partitions, wut? You people are crazy. Hey let's all be stuck in the 90's with our HD worrywart behavior. Maybe you need to manually defragment your drive for no reason too. Hey I think I got a stack of 800k floppies around here somewhere for my most precious data.

Give me a break. The solutions you seek are called Lion Internet restore and iCloud. Failure rates on these drives? You're more likely to have the screen die. Performance concerns? You aren't paying attention to benchmarks. I read an amazing amount of theoretical nonsense from concerns mired in another decade.

The performance of the machines look great, but it could be deceptive. The laptops scale down performance if in danger of overheating, or so Apple claims. So my question is this; What is the performance of these laptops like when used for an extended period of time. Like with, for example, a game.

Off-topic: Why does everyone keep spelling tyre with an i? Aren't there enough i's in this Apple i-obsessed world already? \

Ask you self why, you changed it.

Quote:

Tyre (UK), Tire (US)

The outer portion of a wheel, which contacts the road or the rail and may be made of metal or rubber. In Canada as in the US. Tire is the older spelling, but both were used in the 15th and 16th centuries (for a metal tire). Tire became the settled spelling in the 17th century but tyre was revived in the UK in the 19th century for rubber / pneumatic tyres, possibly because it was used in some patent documents,[159] though many continued to use tire for the iron variety. The Times newspaper was still using tire as late as 1905. For the verb meaning "to grow weary" both American and British English use the tire spelling exclusively.

Off-topic: Why does everyone keep spelling tyre with an i? Aren't there enough i's in this Apple i-obsessed world already?

Ask you self why, you changed it.

Quote:

Tyre (UK), Tire (US)

The outer portion of a wheel, which contacts the road or the rail and may be made of metal or rubber. In Canada as in the US. Tire is the older spelling, but both were used in the 15th and 16th centuries (for a metal tire). Tire became the settled spelling in the 17th century but tyre was revived in the UK in the 19th century for rubber / pneumatic tyres, possibly because it was used in some patent documents,[159] though many continued to use tire for the iron variety. The Times newspaper was still using tire as late as 1905. For the verb meaning "to grow weary" both American and British English use the tire spelling exclusively.

Well, I suppose you could buy an external USB hard drive, you know, like you'd use for backup, and clone the internal drive to it. Then start the MacBook Air from it, run Disk Utility and use that to ZERO the internal SSD drive. Shutdown, disconnect external drive, restart, and restore the base condition from the recovery partition and an ethernet connection.

EDIT2: Well, regardless of how I'm reading it, it seems that the amount dedicated to the HD 3k is 256MB in the $999 11-inch model and 384MB in the $1199 model and the 13''. For some reason AI doesn't seem to mention that fact.

If all other Intel IGP's are an indication, its more about 2 vs 4GB RAM than the MBA size. Someone should check if the 4GB 11' will use 384MB.

In any case, with a chip like this the size of the vRAM likely won't be as constraining as the performance of the chip itself.

It's actually going to be $69.99, but that's not in addition to the Lion download - it's instead of the Lion download (it includes the purchase price for Lion).

That's true, but if you purchased Lion via the App store like everyone else and the USB stick isn't going to be available for weeks, they won't give you a $30 rebate. so you'll be still paying for both

I am really surprised that there is still no black border around the monitor.

Seems as if they would want to standardize their industrial design.

They couldn't standardize without putting a glass panel over the screen, which would add both thickness and weight. That's justified in an iPad where the screen is going to see a lot more wear, but it doesn't make sense on an ultraportable notebook.

I dont like the no recovery media part... that should be included even if it isnt "cool" or whatever and it couldnt cost more than $2-3$ -- what if the internal drive fails? what if the user wants to wipe and reload before sale (and when I say wipe and reload, i dont mean just blast an image on from a recovery partition. What I mean is use a program like DBAN to wipe the entire disk to DoD spec as I do when selling old gear or even giving it to family)

I expect no media or some crappy DIY solution when I am buying a $300 netbook, I do not expect this from Apples pricey ultra portable line.

So you're wondering how you would reinstall the OS if the drive fails? Um, what are you supposed to reinstall it TO if the drive fails? Are you going to buy a new SSD, pry the Air apart, and perform a DIY? Unlikely. The majority of people would take it to the Apple Store.

Most of the time, it's not the drive that fails (especially with a SSD) but rather the partition that gets corrupted; in this case, you would have an uncorrupted partition to restore from.

First; hidden part ions can be exploited by virus writers. Second; drives fail. Third; it wastes space p, especially on AIRs where space is extremely limited.

Supposedly this gives the machine the ability to restore right over the Internet. OK; so what do you do if the partition on the drive isn't restorable? Yeah I know sometimes it is but a un repairable drive is not uncommon.

From Apples standpoint I can see some positives. For one it allows a restore even if the user doesn't have his dongle with him. Let's have a show of hands - how many know where their USB key is right now?

Apple could easily address this by simply offering a utility to build a recovery drive on a USB dongle or an SD card.

Why do people keep worrying about if the drive fails? If the drive fails, you're going to have to bring it into the Apple Store; it's not a desktop device with easily swappable components.

And if the drive fails (as in, the SSD is toast, the recovery partition is corrupted, and it needs to be replaced), what good is external media going to do, other than boot the computer up and see that the drive is bad? The odds of this happening on a SSD are much lower than a HDD, and if it did, the Genius Bar has the external media you need.

Supposedly this gives the machine the ability to restore right over the Internet. OK; so what do you do if the partition on the drive isn't restorable? Yeah I know sometimes it is but a un repairable drive is not uncommon.

The internet restore will work even if the drive is completely blank and has no restore partition, it should work even if the p-table is corrupt, so long as the drive can be reformatted. It's built into the boot loader ROM on these machines as I understand it.